Friday, December 5, 2008

Vacation - Day 1 - San Diego, CA

Gerd and I needed a break, so we put together a trip to the Southwest. I’ve got friends in San Diego and family in Arizona, so we thought we’d see each and have a relaxing time. We headed out of Minneapolis on the 3rd after work. It was a really hot flight down to Phoenix – like people were complaining about how hot it was on the flight. It was bad. We survived but only barely ha ha. No problems on the flight aside from the temp and no problems on the flight from Phoenix to San Diego.

Well, mostly. When we showed up at the gate, there weren't any airport staff to meet us at the SD airport. The pilots got on the PA and said we’re here on time, but no one is here. Literally, we waited like 10 minutes for someone to show up on the skyway. It took three people to figure out how to move the thing. Apparently they were all new or “it wasn’t their job.” In fact, when they did, they didn’t know how to stop it once started and it rammed the side of the plane. Classic.

We hopped on the rental car shuttle. As Gerd is getting on the shuttle, the driver yells at her, "Break it down! Break it down! Break it down!" I turned around to see if she was egging on some of Gerd's famous dance moves, but apparently, Gerd was getting the riot act for not putting her handle on her rolling luggage down before getting on the shuttle. Chill out lady shuttle driver!

We grabbed a rental car from Thirty and they didn’t have a compact (the cheapest) available that we could drop off in Phoenix on the 10th. So we ended up with a Jeep Commander for the week. Awesome!!! It took us a while at the rental place due to some computer glitches and then issues with me trying to find the window button and then the door handle when we went to check out. But it was dark, right?

We used the GPS feature on my new Blackberry Storm to find our friends house. I hadn’t met my friend’s new husband, but we missed their wedding in August, so this was part of why we planned the trip in the first place – guilt. We made it to the house and met the new husband. Great guy. I would have liked him no matter what since he married my friend, but I actually really like the guy. We talked and got caught up and played with the dog – in general a fantastic start to the vacation.

We stayed up way too late talking and drinking wine, but it was a good thing, since I’m a bad sleeper anyway. We had a full day planned for Thursday, so we needed our beauty sleep.

Top 5 things about vacation day 11. No work!2. Jeep Commander at a compact car price3. GPS finding our way for us4. Wine at the end of vacation day 15. My friends RULE!

Bottom 5 things1. Super hot flight2. Long delay at rental car place3. My ineptitude of opening windows or doors of vehicles4. Airport workers ineptitude at driving a skyway5. Time changes make us sleepy at odd times